Though the news is not yet reflected on the Steam Website, Valve announces the Windows editions of The Sacrifice DLC for Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 are both now automatically available through Steam, free of charge for owners of those games. This is accompanied by the release of the Mac edition of Left 4 Dead 2, which, like all Steamplay games, is free for those who already own the Windows edition. For those who don't already possess the zombie shooter sequel, Left 4 Dead 2 is currently on sale for 66% off, as is the original Left 4 Dead (though the Mac edition of that is not expected until the end of this month). The Xbox 360 editions of both DLC are expected later today. Here's word on The Sacrifice for those who have only taken a passing interest to this point:

"The Sacrifice" is the prequel to "The Passing," and takes place from the L4D Survivors' perspective as they make their way South. In addition to advancing the story, "The Sacrifice" introduces a new style finale featuring "Sacrificial Gameplay" where players get to decide who will give their life so the others may live.

The Sacrifice DLC for L4D1 is a separate download than The Sacrifice for L4D2.

In The Sacrifice for Left 4 Dead 1 gamers receive the complete Sacrifice campaign with maps playable in Campaign, Versus, and Survival.

In The Sacrifice for Left 4 Dead 2 owners receive "The Sacrifice" campaign playable with the Left 4 Dead Survivors. In addition, those with Left 4 Dead 2 receive L4D's "No Mercy" campaign. Both campaigns are playable in Campaign, Versus, Survival, and Scavenge modes and both will feature the Left 4 Dead 2 Special Infected, items, and weapons. Yes, Zoey with a chainsaw!

Way better The Passing was overall but still a whole 40 minutes of enjoyment total. Valve just takes too long on these things, I don't know how the TF2 team iterates so quickly but every other side of the company seems to operate at the speed of a turtle.

Played through the new campaign in Versus mode twice last night. Overall it's a good campaign. As an L4D1 player, though, it feels really strange shooting zombies in broad daylight

We encountered bugs in both playthroughs. Not sure if that's because of the patch or the new campaign. In one game the auto shotgun was bugged such that character animations screwed up for anyone using it. This bug affected everyone on the server, not just me.

Also, the tank in the train car was somehow triggered before we opened the door which caused some confusion. Everyone was running away due to the tank music, but the big guy was still locked in the train.

Like the two patch campaigns before it this one is short and lacking compared to the main ones, but still a good time. The middle level with the boats felt unique. I played it on both L4D and L4D2 and it was certainly made with 2 in mind, as the chargers and spitters felt right for the maps.

I had played No Mercy in L4D2 before via mods, but the polished official version is nice... those chargers make the roof level verrrrrry interesting.

PHJF wrote on Oct 5, 2010, 22:55:It's OK. The finale sucked and my team had no idea what we were doing. We ran to the blue objects and turned them on and then just... waited around for five minutes. Then another blue object appeared and we ran to that.

Now watch for valve to virtually drop support for L4D1 despite promises not to. This will be the last DLC for l4d1, it was only #2 (and no, I don't count the patch adding vs versions of what it had for campaign maps, thats adding content that should have been in the release version, and the survival mode added a single mini map and reused bits of other maps). This despite promises of valve (including from Gabe) that it would be better supported than TF2, with faster and more DLC, new weapons, new special infected, etc. And the other main DLC for l4d1 only added a very short campaign, granted it was nice to have ONE short campaign if you didn't want to take 2 hours in vs, but I have a feeling valve did that more so they could focus a minimum of attention of L4D1 while doing L4D2.

Because valve never EVER prepares adequate bandwidth for big game releases or big DLC releases (it downloaded 7 gigs of updates for L4D1/2 for me). Despite repeated failures they just don't reserve enough. They reserve something like 2 or 3 times normal, but its far more than that.

Happened with L4D1, L4D2, each DLC for them, major DLC for TF2, game releases like HL2 ep2, I think with MW2, etc etc etc.

It's OK. The finale sucked and my team had no idea what we were doing. We ran to the blue objects and turned them on and then just... waited around for five minutes. Then another blue object appeared and we ran to that.

Another 30 minutes of gameplay, pushing me up to a monumental 9 whole hours of L4D2. The "Sacrificial Gameplay" was particularly silly - just click a button and win. It's the end of the game so death is meaningless anyway.